globalizationthe process , culturala phenomenon by which the experience of everyday life, marked as influenced by the diffusion of commodities and ideas, can foster reflects a standardization of cultural expressions around the world. An extreme interpretation of this process, often referred to as globalism, sees advanced capitalism, boosted by wireless and Internet communications and electronic business transactions, destroying local traditions and regional distinctions, creating in their place a homogenized world culture. According to this view, human experience everywhere is in jeopardy of becoming Propelled by the efficiency or appeal of wireless communications, electronic commerce, popular culture, and international travel, globalization has been seen as a trend toward homogeneity that will eventually make human experience everywhere essentially the same. This appears, however, to be an overstatement of the phenomenon. Though Although homogenizing influences do indeed exist, people they are far from creating anything akin to a single overarching world culture.

Emergence of global subcultures

Some observers argue that a rudimentary version of world culture is already taking shape among certain individuals who share similar values, aspirations, or lifestyles. The result is a collection of elite groups whose unifying ideals transcend geographical limitations.

“Davos” culture

One such cadre, according to political scientist Samuel Huntington in The Clash of Civilizations (1998), comprises an elite group of highly educated people who operate in the rarefied domains of international finance, media, and diplomacy. Named after the Swiss town that began hosting annual meetings of the World Economic Forum in 1971, these “Davos” insiders share common beliefs about individualism, democracy, and market economics. They are said to follow a recognizable lifestyle, are instantly identifiable anywhere in the world, and feel more comfortable in each other’s presence than they do among their less-sophisticated compatriots.

The international “faculty club”

The globalization of cultural subgroups is not limited to the upper classes. Expanding on the concept of Davos culture, sociologist Peter L. Berger observed that the globalization of Euro-American academic agendas and lifestyles has created a worldwide “faculty club”—an international network of people who share similar values, attitudes, and research goals. While not as wealthy or privileged as their Davos counterparts, members of this international faculty club wield tremendous influence through their association with educational institutions worldwide and have been instrumental in promoting feminism, environmentalism, and human rights as global issues. Berger cited the antismoking movement as a case in point: the movement began as a singular North American preoccupation in the 1970s and subsequently spread to other parts of the world, traveling along the contours of academe’s global network.

Nongovernmental organizations

Another global subgroup comprises “cosmopolitans” who nurture an intellectual appreciation for local cultures. As pointed out by Swedish anthropologist Ulf Hannerz, this group advocates a view of global culture based not on the “replication of uniformity” but on the “organization of diversity.” Often promoting this view are nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that lead efforts to preserve cultural traditions in the developing world. By the beginning of the 21st century, institutions such as Cultural Survival were operating on a world scale, drawing attention to indigenous groups who are encouraged to perceive themselves as “first peoples”—a new global designation emphasizing common experiences of exploitation among indigenous inhabitants of all lands. By sharpening such identities, these NGOs have globalized the movement to preserve indigenous world cultures.

Transnational workers

Another group stems from the rise of a transnational workforce. Indian-born anthropologist Arjun Appadurai has studied English-speaking professionals who trace their origins to South Asia but who live and work elsewhere. They circulate in a social world that has multiple home bases, and they have gained access to a unique network of individuals and opportunities. For example, many software engineers and Internet entrepreneurs who live and work in Silicon Valley, California, maintain homes in—and strong social ties to—Indian states such as Maharashtra and Punjab.

The persistence of local culture

Underlying these various visions of globalization is a reluctance to define exactly what is meant by the term culture. During most of the 20th century, anthropologists defined culture as a shared set of beliefs, customs, and ideas that held people together in recognizable, self-identified groups. Scholars in many disciplines challenged this notion of cultural coherence, especially as it became evident that members of close-knit groups held radically different visions of their social worlds. Culture is no longer perceived as a knowledge system inherited from ancestors. As a result, many social scientists now treat culture as a set of ideas, attributes, and expectations that change as people react to changing circumstances. Indeed, by the turn of the 21st century, the collapse of barriers enforced by Soviet communism and the rise of electronic commerce have increased the perceived speed of social change everywhere.

The term local culture is commonly used to characterize the experience of everyday life in specific, identifiable localities. It reflects ordinary people’s feelings of appropriateness, comfort, and correctness—attributes that define personal preferences and changing tastes. Given the strength of local cultures, it is difficult to argue that an overarching global culture actually exists. Jet-setting sophisticates may feel comfortable operating in a global network disengaged from specific localities, but these people constitute a very small minority; their numbers are insufficient to sustain a coherent cultural system. It is more important to ask where these global operators maintain their families, what kind of kinship networks they rely upon, if any, and whether theirs is a transitory lifestyle or a permanent condition. For most people, place and locality still matter. Even the transnational workers discussed by Appadurai are rooted in local communities bound by common perceptions of what represents an appropriate and fulfilling lifestyle.

Experiencing globalization

Research on globalization has shown that it is not an omnipotent, unidirectional force leveling everything in its path. Because a global culture does not exist, any search for it would be futile. It is more fruitful to instead focus on particular aspects of life that are indeed affected by the globalizing process.

The collapse compression of time and space

The breakdown of time and space is best illustrated by the influential “global village” thesis posed by communications scholar Marshall McLuhan in Gutenberg Galaxy (1962). Instantaneous communication, predicted McLuhan, would soon destroy geographically based power imbalances and create a global village. Later, geographer David Harvey argued that the postmodern condition is characterized by a “time-space compression” that arises from inexpensive air travel and the ever-present use of telephones, fax, and, more recently, e-mail.

There can be little doubt that people perceive the world today as a smaller place than it appeared to their grandparents. In the 1960s and ’70s immigrant workers in London relied on postal systems and personally delivered letters to send news back to their home villages in India, China, and elsewhere; it could take two months to receive a reply. The telephone was not an option, even in dire emergencies. By the late 1990s, the grandchildren of these first-generation migrants were carrying cellular phones that linked them to cousins in cities such as Calcutta (Kolkata), Singapore, or Shanghai. Awareness of time zones (when people will be awake; what time offices open) is now second nature to people whose work or family ties connect them to far-reaching parts of the world.

McLuhan’s notion of the global village presupposed the worldwide spread of television, which brings distant events into the homes of viewers everywhere. Building on this concept, McLuhan claimed that accelerated communications produce an “implosion” of personal experience—that is, distant events are brought to the immediate attention of people halfway around the world.

The spectacular growth of Cable News Network (CNN) is a case in point. CNN became an icon of globalization by broadcasting its U.S.-style news programming around the world, 24 hours a day. Live coverage of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the Persian Gulf War in 1991, and extended coverage of events surrounding the terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington, D.C., on September 11, 2001, illustrated television’s powerful global reach. Some governments have responded to such advances by attempting to restrict international broadcasting, but satellite communication makes these restrictions increasingly unenforceable.

The standardization of experience

Travel

Since the mid-1960s, the cost of international flights has declined, and foreign travel has become a routine experience for millions of middle- and working-class people. Diplomats, businesspeople, and ordinary tourists can feel “at home” in any city, anywhere in the world. Foreign travel no longer involves the challenge of adapting to unfamiliar food and living arrangements. CNN has been an essential feature of the standardized hotel experience since at least the 1990s. More significantly, Western-style beds, toilets, showers, fitness centres, and restaurants now constitute the global standard. A Japanese variant on the Westernized hotel experience, featuring Japanese-style food and accommodations, can also be found in most major cities. These developments are linked to the technology of climate control. In fact, the very idea of routine global travel was inconceivable prior to the universalization of air-conditioning. An experience of this nature would have been nearly impossible in the 1960s, when the weather, aroma, and noise of the local society pervaded one’s hotel room.

Clothing

Modes of dress can disguise an array of cultural diversity behind a facade of uniformity. The man’s business suit, with coloured tie and buttoned shirt, has become “universal” in the sense that it is worn just about everywhere, although variations have appeared in countries that are cautious about adopting global popular culture. Iranian parliamentarians, for example, wear the “Western” suit but forgo the tie, while Saudi diplomats alternate “traditional” Bedouin robes with tailored business suits, depending upon the occasion. In the early years of the 21st century, North Korea and Afghanistan were among the few societies holding out against these globalizing trends.

The emergence of women’s “power suits” in the 1980s signified another form of global conformity. Stylized trouser-suits, with silk scarves and colourful blouses (analogues of the male business suit), are now worldwide symbols of modernity, independence, and competence. Moreover, the export of used clothing from Western countries to developing nations has accelerated the adoption of Western-style dress by people of all socioeconomic levels around the world.

Some military fashions reflect a similar sense of convergence. Rebel fighters, such as those in Central Africa, South America, or the Balkans, seemed to take their style cue from the guerrilla garb worn by movie star Sylvester Stallone in his trilogy of Rambo films. In the 1990s the United States military introduced battle helmets that resembled those worn by the German infantry during World War II. Many older Americans were offended by the association with Nazism, but younger Americans and Europeans made no such connections. In 2001, a similar helmet style was worn by elite Chinese troops marching in a parade in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.

Chinese fashion underwent sweeping change after the death in 1976 of Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong and the resultant economic liberalization. Western suits or casual wear became the norm. The androgynous gray or blue Mao suit essentially disappeared in the 1980s, worn only by communist patriarch Deng Xiaoping and a handful of aging leaders who dressed in the uniform of the Cultural Revolution until their deaths in the 1990s—by which time Mao suits were being sold in Hong Kong and Shanghai boutiques as high-priced nostalgia wear, saturated with postmodern irony.

Entertainment

The power of media conglomerates and the ubiquity of entertainment programming has globalized television’s impact and made it a logical target for accusations of cultural imperialism. Critics cite a 1999 anthropological study that linked the appearance of anorexia in Fiji to the popularity of American television programs, notably Melrose Place and Beverly Hills 90210. Both series featured slender young actresses who, it was claimed, led Fijian women (who are typically fuller-figured) to question indigenous notions of the ideal body.

Anti-globalism activists contend that American television shows have corrosive effects on local cultures by highlighting Western notions of beauty, individualism, and sexuality. Although many of the titles exported are considered second-tier shows in the United States, there is no dispute that these programs are part of the daily fare for viewers around the world. Television access is widespread, even if receivers are not present in every household. In the small towns of Guatemala, the villages of Jiangxi province in China, or the hill settlements of Borneo, for instance, one television set—often a satellite system powered by a gasoline generator—may serve two or three dozen viewers, each paying a small fee. Collective viewing in bars, restaurants, and teahouses was common during the early stages of television broadcasting in Indonesia, Japan, Kenya, and many other countries. By the 1980s video-viewing parlours had become ubiquitous in many regions of the globe.

Live sports programs continue to draw some of the largest global audiences. The 1998 World Cup men’s football (soccer) final between Brazil and France was watched by an estimated two billion people. After the 1992 Olympic Games, when the American “Dream Team” of National Basketball Association (NBA) stars electrified viewers who had never seen the sport played to U.S. professional standards, NBA games were broadcast in Australia, Israel, Japan, China, Germany, and Britain. In the late 1990s Michael Jordan, renowned for leading the Chicago Bulls to six championships with his stunning basketball skills, became one of the world’s most recognized personalities.

Hollywood movies have had a similar influence, much to the chagrin of some countries. In early 2000 Canadian government regulators ordered the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) to reduce the showing of Hollywood films during prime time and to instead feature more Canadian-made programming. CBC executives protested that their viewers would stop watching Canadian television stations and turn to satellite reception for international entertainment. Such objections were well grounded, given that, in 1998, 79 percent of English-speaking Canadians named a U.S. program when asked to identify their favourite television show.

Hollywood, however, does not hold a monopoly on entertainment programming. The world’s most prolific film industry is in Bombay (Mumbai), India (“Bollywood”), where as many as 1,000 feature films are produced annually in all of India’s major languages. Primarily love stories with heavy doses of singing and dancing, Bollywood movies are popular throughout Southeast Asia and the Middle East. State censors in Islamic countries often find the modest dress and subdued sexuality of Indian film stars acceptable for their audiences. Although the local appeal of Bollywood movies remains strong, exposure to Hollywood films such as Jurassic Park (1993) and Speed (1994) caused young Indian moviegoers to develop an appreciation for the special effects and computer graphics that had become the hallmarks of many American films.

Food

Food is the oldest global carrier of culture. In fact, food has always been a driving force for globalization, especially during earlier phases of European trade and colonial expansion. The hot red pepper was introduced to the Spanish court by Christopher Columbus in 1493. It spread rapidly throughout the colonial world, transforming cuisines and farming practices in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. It might be difficult to imagine Korean cuisine without red pepper paste or Szechuan food without its fiery hot sauce, but both are relatively recent innovations—probably from the 17th century. Other New World crops, such as corn (maize), cassava, sweet potatoes, and peanuts (groundnuts), were responsible for agricultural revolutions in Asia and Africa, opening up terrain that had previously been unproductive.

One century after the sweet potato was introduced into south China (in the mid-1600s), it had become a dominant crop and was largely responsible for a population explosion that created what today is called Cantonese culture. It is the sweet potato, not the more celebrated white rice, which sustained generations of southern Chinese farmers.

These are the experiences that cause cultural meaning to be attached to particular foods. Today the descendants of Cantonese, Hokkien, and Hakka pioneers disdain the sweet potato as a “poverty food” that conjures images of past hardships. In Taiwan, by contrast, independence activists (affluent members of the rising Taiwanese middle class) have embraced the sweet potato as an emblem of identity, reviving old recipes and celebrating their cultural distinctions from “rice-eating mainlanders.”

While the global distribution of foods originated with the pursuit of exotic spices (such as black pepper, cinnamon, and cloves), contemporary food trading features more prosaic commodities, such as soybeans and apples. African bananas, Chilean grapes, and California oranges have helped to transform expectations about the availability and affordability of fresh produce everywhere in the world. Green beans are now grown in Burkina Faso in Central Africa and shipped by express air cargo to Paris, where they end up on the plates of diners in the city’s top restaurants. This particular exchange system is based on a “nontraditional” crop that was not grown in Burkina Faso until the mid-1990s, when the World Bank encouraged its cultivation as a means of promoting economic development. The country soon became Africa’s second largest exporter of green beans. Central African farmers consequently found themselves in direct competition with other “counter-season” growers of green beans from Brazil and Florida.

The average daily diet has also undergone tremendous change, with all nations converging on a diet high in meat, dairy products, and processed sugars. Correlating closely to a worldwide rise in affluence, the new “global diet” is not necessarily a beneficial trend, as it can increase the risk of obesity and diabetes. Now viewed as a global health threat, obesity has been dubbed “globesity” by the World Health Organization. To many observers, the homogenization of human diet appears to be unstoppable. Vegetarians, environmental activists, and organic food enthusiasts have organized rearguard actions to reintroduce “traditional” and more wholesome dietary practices, but these efforts have been concentrated among educated elites in industrial nations.

Western food corporations are often blamed for these dietary trends. McDonald’s, KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken), and Coca-Cola are primary targets of anti-globalism demonstrators (who are themselves organized into global networks, via the Internet). McDonald’s has become a symbol of globalism for obvious reasons: on an average day in 2001, the company served nearly 45 million customers at more than 25,000 restaurants in 120 countries. It succeeds in part by adjusting its menu to local needs. In India, for example, no beef products are sold.

McDonald’s also succeeds in countries that might be expected to disdain fast food. In France, for example, food, especially haute cuisine, is commonly regarded as the core element of French culture. Nevertheless, McDonald’s continues to expand in the very heartland of opposition: by the turn of the 21st century there were more than 850 McDonald’s restaurants in France, employing over 30,000 people. Not surprisingly, many European protest movements have targeted McDonald’s as an agent of cultural imperialism. French intellectuals may revile the Big Mac sandwich for all that it symbolizes, but the steady growth of fast-food chains demonstrates that anti-globalist attitudes do not always affect economic behaviour, even in societies (such as France) where these sentiments are nearly universal. Like their counterparts in the United States, French workers are increasingly pressed for time. The two-hour lunch is largely a thing of the past.

Food and beverage companies attract attention because they cater to the most elemental form of human consumption. We are what we eat, and when diet changes, notions of national and ethnic identity are affected. Critics claim that the spread of fast food undermines indigenous cuisines by forcing a homogenization of world dietary preferences, but anthropological research in Russia, Japan, and Hong Kong does not support this view.

Close study of cultural trends at the local level, however, shows that the globalization of fast food can influence public conduct. Fast-food chains have introduced practices that changed some consumer behaviours and preferences. For example, in Japan, where using one’s hands to eat prepared foods was considered a gross breech breach of etiquette, the popularization of McDonald’s hamburgers has had such a dramatic impact on popular etiquette that it is now common to see Tokyo commuters eating in public , without chopsticks or spoons.

In late-Soviet Russia, rudeness had become a high art form among service personnel. Today customers expect polite, friendly service when they visit Moscow restaurants—a social revolution initiated by McDonald’s and its employee training programs. Since its opening in 1990, Moscow’s Pushkin Square restaurant has been one of the busiest McDonald’s in the world.

The social atmosphere in colonial Hong Kong of the 1960s was anything but genteel. Cashing a check, boarding a bus, or buying a train ticket required brute force. When McDonald’s opened in 1975, customers crowded around the cash registers, shouting orders and waving money over the heads of people in front of them. McDonald’s responded by introducing queue monitors—young women who channeled customers into orderly lines. Queuing subsequently became a hallmark of Hong Kong’s cosmopolitan, middle-class culture. Older residents credit McDonald’s for introducing the queue, a critical element in this social transition.

Yet another innovation, in some areas of Asia, Latin America, and Europe, was McDonald’s provision of clean toilets and washrooms. In this way the company was instrumental in setting new cleanliness standards (and thereby raising consumer expectations) in cities that had never offered public facilities. Wherever McDonald’s has set up business, it rapidly has become a haven for an emerging class of middle-income urbanites.

The introduction of fast food has been particularly influential on children, especially since so many advertisements are designed to appeal to them. Largely as a consequence of such advertising, American-style birthday parties have spread to many parts of the world where individual birth dates previously had never been celebrated. McDonald’s and KFC have become the leading venues for birthday parties throughout East Asia, with special rooms and services provided for the events. These and other symbolic effects make fast food a powerful force for dietary and social change, because a meal at these restaurants will introduce practices that younger consumers may not experience at home—most notably, the chance to choose one’s own food. The concept of personal choice is symbolic of Western consumer culture. Visits to McDonald’s and KFC have become signal events for children who approach fast-food restaurants with a heady sense of empowerment.

Religion and globalization

Central to Huntington’s thesis in The Clash of Civilizations is the assumption that the post-Cold War world would regroup into regional alliances based on religious beliefs and historical attachments to various “civilizations.” Identifying three prominent groupings—Western Christianity (Roman Catholicism and Protestantism), Orthodox Christianity (Russian and Greek), and Islam, with additional influences from Hinduism and Confucianism—he predicted that the progress of globalization would be severely constrained by religio-political barriers. The result would be a “multipolar world.” Huntington’s view differed markedly from those who prophesied a standardized, homogenized global culture.

There is, however, considerable ethnographic evidence, gathered by anthropologists and sociologists, that refutes this model of civilizational clash and suggests instead a rapid diffusion of religious and cultural systems throughout the world. Islam is one case in point, given that it constitutes one of the fastest-growing religions in the United States, France, and Germany—supposed bastions of Western Christianity. Before the end of the 20th century, entire arrondisementsarrondissements(districts) of Paris were dominated by Muslims, the majority of them French citizens born and reared in France. Thirty-five percent of students in the suburban Dearborn, Michigan, public school system were Muslim in 2001, making the provision of ḥalāl (“lawful” under Islam) meals at lunchtime a hot issue in local politics. By the start of the 21st century, Muslims of Turkish origin constituted the fastest-growing sector of Berlin’s population, and, in northern England, the old industrial cities of Bradford and Newcastle had been revitalized by descendants of Pakistani and Indian Muslims who immigrated during the 1950s and ’60s.

From its inception, Christianity has been an aggressively proselytizing religion with a globalizing agenda. Indeed, the Roman Catholic church Church was arguably the first global institution, having spread rapidly throughout the European colonial world and beyond. Today, perhaps the fastest-growing religion is evangelical Christianity. Stressing the individual’s personal experience of divinity (as opposed to priestly intercession), evangelicalism has gained wide appeal in regions such as Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa, presenting serious challenges to established Catholic churches. Following the collapse of Soviet power in 1991, the Russian Orthodox church began the process of rebuilding after more than seven decades of repression. At the same time, evangelical missionaries from the United States and Europe shifted much of their attention from Latin America and Africa to Russia, alarming Russian Orthodox leaders. By 1997, under pressure from Orthodox clergy, the Russian government promoted legislation to restrict the activities of religious organizations that had operated in Russia for less than 15 years, effectively banning Western evangelical missionaries. The debate over Russian religious unity continues, however, and, if China is any guide, such legislation could have little long-term effect.

In China, unauthorized “house churches” became a major concern for Communist Party officials who attempted to control Muslim, Christian, and Buddhist religious activity through state-sponsored organizations. Many of the unrecognized churches are syncretic in the sense that they combine aspects of local religion with Christian ideas. As a result they have been almost impossible to organize, let alone control.

Social scientists confirm the worldwide resurgence, since the late 20th century, of conservative religion among faiths such as Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and even Shinto in Japan and Sikhism in India. The social and political connotations of these conservative upsurges are unique to each culture and religion. For example, some sociologists have identified Christian evangelicalism as a leading carrier of modernization: its emphasis on the Bible is thought to encourage literacy, while involvement in church activities can teach administrative skills that are applicable to work environments. As a sociologist of religion, Berger argues that “there may be other globalizing popular movements [today], but evangelicalism is clearly the most dynamic.”

Demographic influences

Huntington’s “clash of civilizations” thesis assumes that the major East Asian societies constitute an alliance of “Confucian” cultures that share a common heritage in the teachings of Confucius, the ancient Chinese sage. Early 21st-century lifestyles in Tokyo, Seoul, Beijing, Taipei, and Hong Kong, however, show far more evidence of globalization than Confucianization. The reputed hallmarks of Confucianism—respect for parental authority and ancestral traditions—are no more salient in these cities than in Boston, London, or Berlin. This is a consequence of (among other things) a steady reduction in family size that has swept through East Asian societies since the 1980s. State-imposed restrictions on family size, late childbearing, and resistance to marriage among highly educated, working women have undermined the basic tenets of the Confucian family in Asia.

Birth rates in Singapore and Japan, in fact, have fallen below replacement levels and are at record low levels in Hong Kong; birth rates in Beijing, Shanghai, and other major Chinese cities are also declining rapidly. These developments mean that East Asia—like Europe—could face a fiscal crisis as decreasing numbers of workers are expected to support an ever-growing cohort of retirees. By 2025, China is projected to have 274 million people over age 60—more than the entire 1998 population of the United States. The prospects for other East Asian countries are far worse: 17.2 percent of Japan’s 127 million people were over age 65 in 2000; by 2020 that percentage could rise to 27.

Meanwhile, Asia’s “Confucian” societies face a concurrent revolution in family values: the conjugal family (centring on the emotional bond between wife and husband) is rapidly replacing the patriarchal joint family (focused on support of aged parents and grandparents). This transformation is occurring even in remote, rural regions of northwest China where married couples now expect to reside in their own home (“neolocal” residence) as opposed to the house or compound of the groom’s parents (“patrilocal” residence). The children produced by these conjugal units are very different from their older kin who were reared in joint families: today’s offspring are likely to be pampered only children known as “Little Emperors” or “Little Empresses.” Contemporary East Asian families are characterized by an ideology of consumerism that is diametrically opposed to the neo-authoritarian Confucian rhetoric promoted by political leaders such as Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew and Hong Kong’s Tung Chee-hwa at the turn of the 21st century.

Italy, Mexico, and Sweden (among other countries) also experienced dramatic reductions in family size and birth rates during the late 20th century. Furthermore, new family formations are taking root, such as those of the transnational workers who maintain homes in more than one country. Multi-domiciled families were certainly evident before the advent of cheap air travel and cellular phones, but new technologies have changed the quality of life (much for the better) in diaspora communities. Thus, the globalization of family life is no longer confined to migrant workers from developing economies who take low-paying jobs in advanced capitalist societies. The transnational family is increasingly a mark of high social status and affluence.

Political consequences of globalization

Challenges to national sovereignty and identity

Anti-globalism activists often depict the McDonald’s, Disney, and Coca-Cola corporations as agents of globalism or cultural imperialism—a new form of economic and political domination. Critics of globalism argue that any business enterprise capable of manipulating personal tastes will thrive, whereas state authorities everywhere will lose control over the distribution of goods and services. According to this view of world power, military force is perceived as hopelessly out of step or even powerless; the control of culture (and its production) is seen as far more important than the control of political and geographic borders. Certainly, it is true that national boundaries are increasingly permeable and any effort by nations to exclude global pop culture usually makes the banned objects all the more irresistible.

The commodities involved in the exchange of popular culture are related to lifestyle, especially as experienced by young people: pop music, film, video, comics, fashion, fast foods, beverages, home decorations, entertainment systems, and exercise equipment. Millions of people obtain the unobtainable by using the Internet to breach computer security systems and import barriers. “Information wants to be free” was the clarion call of software designers and aficionados of the World Wide Web in the 1990s. This code of ethics takes its most creative form in societies where governments try hardest to control the flow of information (e.g., China and Iran). In 1999, when Serbian officials shut down the operations of Radio B92, the independent station continued its coverage of events in the former Republic of Yugoslavia by moving its broadcasts to the Internet.

The idea of a borderless world is reflected in theories of the “virtual state,” a new system of world politics that is said to reflect the essential chaos of 21st-century capitalism. In Out of Control (1994), author Kevin Kelly predicted that the Internet would gradually erode the power of governments to control citizens; advances in digital technology would instead allow people to follow their own interests and form trans-state coalitions. Similarly, Richard Rosecrance, in The Rise of the Virtual State (1999), wrote that military conflicts and territorial disputes would be superseded by the flow of information, capital, technology, and manpower between states. Many scholars disagreed, insisting that the state was unlikely to disappear and could continue to be an essential and effective basis of governance.

Arguments regarding the erosion of state sovereignty are particularly unsettling for nations that have become consumers rather than producers of digital technology. Post-Soviet Russia, post-Mao China, and post-Gaullist France are but three examples of Cold War giants facing uncertain futures in the emerging global system. French intellectuals and politicians have seized upon anti-globalism as an organizing ideology in the absence of other unifying themes. In Les cartes de la France à l’heure de la mondialisation (2000; “France’s Assets in the Era of Globalization”), French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine denounced the United States as a “hyperpower” that promotes “uniformity” and “unilateralism.” Speaking for the French intelligentsia, he argued that France should take the lead in building a “multipolar world.” Ordinary French citizens also were concerned about losing their national identity, particularly as the regulatory power of the European Union began to affect everyday life. Sixty percent of respondents in a 1999 L’Expansion poll agreed that globalization represented the greatest threat to the French way of life.

Anti-globalism movements and the Internet

Anti-globalism organizers are found throughout the world, not least in many management organizations. They are often among the world’s most creative and sophisticated users of Internet technology. This is doubly ironic, because even as NGOs contest the effects of globalization, they exhibit many of the characteristics of a global, transnational subculture; the Internet, moreover, is one of the principal tools that makes globalization feasible and organized protests against it possible. For example, Greenpeace, an environmentalist NGO, has orchestrated worldwide protests against genetically modified (GM) foods. Highly organized demonstrations appeared, seemingly overnight, in many parts of the world, denouncing GM products as “Frankenfoods” that pose unknown (and undocumented) dangers to people and to the environment. The bioengineering industry, supported by various scientific organizations, launched its own Internet-based counterattack, but the response was too late and too disorganized to outflank Greenpeace and its NGO allies. Sensational media coverage had already turned consumer sentiment against GM foods before the scientific community even entered the debate.

The anti-GM food movement demonstrates the immense power of the Internet to mobilize political protests. This power derives from the ability of a few determined activists to communicate with thousands (indeed millions) of potential allies in an instant. The Internet’s power as an organizing tool became evident during the World Trade Organization (WTO) protests in Seattle, Washington, in 1999, in which thousands of activists converged on the city, disrupting the WTO meetings and drawing the world’s attention to criticisms of global trade practices. The Seattle protests set the stage for similar types of activism in succeeding years.

The illusion of global culture

Localized responses

For hundreds of millions of urban people, the experience of everyday life has become increasingly standardized since the 1960s. Household appliances, utilities, and transportation facilities are increasingly universal. Technological “marvels” that North Americans and Europeans take for granted have had even more profound effects on the quality of life for billions of people in the less-developed world. Everyday life is changed by the availability of cold beverages, hot water, frozen fish, screened windows, bottled cooking-gas, or the refrigerator. It would be a mistake, however, to assume that these innovations have an identical, homogenizing effect wherever they appear. For most rural Chinese, the refrigerator has continued to be seen as a status symbol. They use it to chill beer, soft drinks, and fruit, but they dismiss the refrigeration of vegetables, meat, and fish as unhealthy. Furthermore, certain foods (notably bean curd dishes) are thought to taste better when cooked with more traditional fuels such as coal or wood, as opposed to bottled gas.

It remains difficult to argue that the globalization of technologies is making the world everywhere the same. The “sameness” hypothesis is only sustainable if one ignores the internal meanings that people assign to cultural innovations.

Borrowing and “translating” popular culture

The domain of popular music illustrates how difficult it is to unravel cultural systems in the contemporary world: Is rock music a universal language? Do reggae and ska have the same meaning to young people everywhere? American-inspired hip-hop (rap) swept through Brazil, Britain, France, China, and Japan in the 1990s. Yet Japanese rappers developed their own, localized versions of this art form. Much of the music of hip-hop, grounded in urban African American experience, is defiantly antiestablishment, but the Japanese lyric content is decidedly mild, celebrating youthful solidarity and exuberance. Similar “translations” between form and content have occurred in the pop music of Indonesia, Mexico, and Korea. Even a casual listener of U.S. radio can hear the profound effects that Brazilian, South African, Indian, and Cuban forms have had on the contemporary American pop scene. An earlier example of splashback—when a cultural innovation returns, somewhat transformed, to the place of its origin—was the British Invasion of the American popular music market in the mid-1960s. Forged in the United States from blues and country music, rock and roll crossed the Atlantic in the 1950s to captivate a generation of young Britons who, forming bands such as the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, made the music their own, then reintroduced it to American audiences with tremendous success. The flow of popular culture is rarely, if ever, unidirectional.

Subjectivity of meaning—the case of Titanic

A cultural phenomenon does not convey the same meaning everywhere. In 1998, the drama and special effects of the American movie Titanic created a sensation among Chinese fans. Scores of middle-aged Chinese returned to the theatres over and over—crying their way through the film. Enterprising hawkers began selling packages of facial tissue outside Shanghai theatres. The theme song of Titanic became a best-selling CD in China, as did posters of the young film stars. Chinese consumers purchased more than 25 million pirated (and 300,000 legitimate) video copies of the film.

One might ask why middle-aged Chinese moviegoers became so emotionally involved with the story told in Titanic. Interviews among older residents of Shanghai revealed that many people had projected their own, long-suppressed experiences of lost youth onto the film. From 1966 to 1976 the Cultural Revolution convulsed China, destroying any possibility of educational or career advancement for millions of people. At that time, communist authorities had also discouraged romantic love and promoted politically correct marriages based on class background and revolutionary commitment. Improbable as it might seem to Western observers, the story of lost love on a sinking cruise ship hit a responsive chord among the veterans of the Cultural Revolution. Their passionate, emotional response had virtually nothing to do with the Western cultural system that framed the film. Instead, Titanic served as a socially acceptable vehicle for the public expression of regret by a generation of aging Chinese revolutionaries who had devoted their lives to building a form of socialism that had long since disappeared.

Chinese President Jiang Zemin invited the entire Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party to a private screening of Titanic so that they would understand the challenge. He cautioned that Titanic could be seen as a Trojan horse, carrying within it the seeds of American cultural imperialism.

Chinese authorities are were not alone in their mistrust of Hollywood. There are those who suggest, as has did China’s Jiang, that exposure to Hollywood films such as Titanicwill cause people everywhere to become more like Americans. Yet anthropologists who study television and film are wary of such suggestions. They emphasize the need to study the particular ways in which consumers make use of popular entertainment. The process of globalization looks far from hegemonic when one focuses on ordinary viewers and their efforts to make sense of what they see.

Another case in point is anthropologist Daniel Miller’s study of television viewing in Trinidad, which demonstrated that viewers are not passive observers. In 1988, 70 percent of Trinidadians who had access to a television watched daily episodes of The Young and the Restless, a series that emphasized family problems, sexual intrigue, and gossip. Miller discovered that Trinidadians had no trouble relating to the personal dramas portrayed in American soap operas, even though the lifestyles and material circumstances differed radically from life in Trinidad. Local people actively reinterpreted the episodes to fit their own experience, seeing the televised dramas as commentaries on contemporary life in Trinidad. The portrayal of American material culture, notably women’s fashions, was a secondary attraction. In other words, it is a mistake to treat television viewers as passive.

The ties that still bind

Local culture remains a powerful influence in daily life. People are tied to places, and those places continue to shape particular norms and values. The fact that residents of Moscow, Beijing, and New Delhi occasionally eat at McDonald’s, watch Hollywood films, and wear Nike athletic shoes (or copies thereof) does not make them “global.” The appearance of homogeneity is the most salient, and ultimately the most deceptive, feature of globalization. Outward appearances do not reveal the internal meanings that people assign to a cultural innovation. True, the standardization of everyday life will likely accelerate as digital technology comes to approximate the toaster in “user-friendliness.” But technological breakthroughs are not enough to create a world culture. People everywhere show a desire to partake of the fruits of globalization, but they just as earnestly want to celebrate the distinctiveness of their own cultures.